Changing flight schedule
 

Already booked tickets and plans changed, need to switch to a different departure/arrival time. I'm trying to use the web portal to schedule new flights and it is nearly impossible to find the exact flight I want. The list is completely polluted by one-stop flights that I do not want.

Different combos of the departure flight I want with some other undesirable return flight, or a undesirable departure flight with the preferred return flight.

Is there any trick to doing this?

To add on to the other reply above.

look at the regular schedule to know what you want before trying to switch flights. Only touch what you want to switch. The problem comes if you booked say 2 separate legs but now only want one leg like you booked a PDX-SEA then SEA-XXX, now you just want anyPDX-XXX flight. In that case you need to can peel one of the legs along with the change.

I had aXXX-SEA then next day SEA-PDX. I changed it to a same day flight with normal layover so I had to say cancel on one of the legs and then rebook the change on the other leg.

Usually I cancel my original reservation to wallet credit (which posts immediately as long as you're cancelling >24 hours after you initially ticketed), and then book an entirely new reservation using the wallet credit. The only reason I'd prefer the "change flight" flow is if my original reservation was booked via a discount code, companion fare, or other instrument I'd like to keep.

I should add that I almost always book one-ways. If you've booked a round-trip and want to change only one direction (while the other has since increased in price), cancelling the original reservation won't work.

There are massive removals of flights for the rest of January - i figure about 50% of Alaska's route network is zeroed out for the rest of this month.....

Expect major changes with the schedule updates this weekend!

so far I'm unaffected -- SEA-IAD, IAD-LAX a week later, and LAX-SEA two days after that

i see 1 SEA IAD gone - down to only a single daily. the others seem to be unaffected.

The least affected hubs are LAX and SEA.

SEA ONT loses 2 per day
SEA SNA losees 1 per day
SEA SAN loses 1 per day
SEA PHX loses 2 per day
SEA ANC loses 1 per day

out stations to SEA or LAX to funnel pax are unaffected.

This will be funneling all pax through SEA for 3 weeks.

But hawaii is largely decimated from the west coast

CMH and CVG are completely gone through the end of the month. I'm scheduled to fly SEA-CVG at the end of the month. Unfortunately for me that means either driving to IND (looks like that's still intact 5x week) or maybe they'd put me on a connection through ORD with AA on ORD-CVG. Fun fun. Not looking forward to having to call/text this weekend when the change shows up on the reservation.

but it's inconsistent; some days it's the morning flight, some days it's the late afternoon one :eek:

I'm surprised all my MR runs to JFK/EWR and BOS remain unaffected....

I'm not holding any breath right now. I was going to be 60%+ to MVP 2023 by mid February. Now, I don't know if I expect to have a single EQM.

I have zero EQM rn but I was expecting to have 89k EQM by Mar 9th.. if they change the schedule I can reroute a few LAX-EWR direct flight via SEA to add more miles and get closer to the 100k finish line.. most folks here fly because they need to go somewhere, I fly cuz I love flying lol, and I abuse schedule change a lot..

That's my luck I have a carefully crafted 9 segment 20K mile mixed Mileage run w/ vacation in HNL in early February. I have my doubts that my reservation will stay intact with the temporary January cuts possibly spilling over.

All service resumes right now in February - i suspect that will stick this C19 wave is going to crash quickly....pretty much everyone i know had it the past month.....so things will get back to normal quickly.

All SJC-Hawaii is gone for the rest of January. Looks like SFO-Hawaii might be cut as well.